


there'll be no forgiveness (second chances)

by The_Curious_Wonderer



Series: various tales in a twin Hawkes AU [5]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: And so we finally get to Garrett, also this work references events that have been in previous stories!!, hawke twins au, i can only write so many people, im gonna have to start reusing characters to tell my stories, so you can probably read this and be fine but if you really wanna understand please read the others
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-10
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-11-12 08:44:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11158323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Curious_Wonderer/pseuds/The_Curious_Wonderer
Summary: There is a split second where Garrett looks at Lavellan, looks at Stroud, and makes his decision.





	there'll be no forgiveness (second chances)

**Author's Note:**

> Title by Imagine Dragons
> 
> I'm sooo sorry for making you guys wait again. More on the notes at the end.
> 
> Find me on tumblr @how-do-i-even-life

 

There is a split second where Garrett looks at Lavellan, looks at Stroud, and makes his decision.

He waves his hand over Adelai's eyes and grabs her hand, willing his own magic through her. It probably wouldn't have worked in the waking world, but the Fade is designed by will- and it had never matched the will of Garrett Hawke before.

He turns away, back to the monstrosity echoing his thoughts and grins, the way Marian usually does before doing something stupid.

(He is seventeen, trying to ignore how his eyes itch and his throat feels scratchy as he kneels in the pew of the chantry, and Sister Leliana tells him, "-or sword fighting, or archery, or magic?" With that same wry ce smile.

_"You deserve this curse," she says just as calmly. "The Maker loves his children if they repent, but how can you atone for who you are?")_

He gasps out of the memory, shivering though the Fade doesn't seem to have a temperature besides 'oddly pleasant.' One hairy claw reaches and taps his face, drawing a line from his temple to his jaw and laughing.

"So much power in you," the Nightmare hisses playfully, shrunken down to meet his gaze. "And so much terror accompanying it. Did they know what a treat they were leaving me when they dropped you and ran?"

Garrett spit at him. "You're awfully ineffectual. Are you even going to do anything to me, or are we just gonna talk for eternity?"

The claws skitter against his face, grasping and turning it, examining his eyes. "You don't know the things I am capable of."

"No," He laughs, pressing his face into the sharp edges and feeling the sharp pricks and warm run of blood. "You don't know what you're up against."

(There's a ripping tearing hole in his chest when everything boils down, once Meredith and Orsino are dead and they need to do cleanup and damage control, figure out what to do with the survived mages, the templars that weren't dead. It's terrifying to look at his friends and know that half of them stood with the mages, it's terrifying to look at them and know that when he stood with the templars, half of them did, too. Marian steals the same glances, licks the same wounds as they wait for it to slow down enough to talk about it.

They finally have it out two nights later, in the study of their Hightown place.

"You stood with the templars! Everything that we've been fighting here in Kirkwall!"

"How can you justify standing with the mages? We know what they've been doing, we know what Orsino did!"

That quiets her.

"The mages here have been out of control for longer than we've been here. You've seen it. Blood magic, sacrifice, dark rituals. We've killed quite a few, we've saved some others, but a new face always rises, with the same old ideas. How long before it's something we can't stop?"

"How long before it's Carver? Under orders, striking down mages? Until it's Bethany under the sword? They have a right, if not to live free, then to at least live without that fear."

_"Didn't Mother have that, right, too?")_

"I didn't say that. I never said that to her."

He's more shaken by that one than he wants to admit, but he can see already a cold little flash in a million eyes, catching every flitting fear he's ever had and replaying it. It knows how much it scares him to have wanted the last word like that, to hurt Marian as much as it hurt him.

"Poor little Garrett," it's voice hisses and skitters its way down his spine. "You never were particularly afraid of the templars, were you? It was always what you could do that scared them. Scared her."

"Marian," he says, and this he knows with a truth that aches, that burns beyond what fears can tell him, "was never scared of me."

"You were scared that she should be."

His face is still under the almost loving caress of claws, scratching against his skin but not breaking the surface until he had leaned into them. They are gentle, he realizes. The way his mothers fingers had combed through his hair when she had told him there were no monsters in the dark.

"You were not scared then that she was lying."

"I was not scared at all until I met monsters like you."

The admission is a double edged sword. The demon practically licks it's chops as he confesses his fear, and he almost feels as if it hangs around him like a tantalizing scent. In the fade, it probably does. He takes a sniff. It's bitter, but honeyed too. Sweet and thick and bitter.

"You do not fear me. You know I will never kill you."

"I know you don't have to."

"Do you miss him?"

The question throws him for a moment. "Yes."

"Which him?"

"Does it matter?"

"Your father," it chitters, "so vibrant in life and so still, so colorless in death. You wondered if you were more afraid of life without him or the idea of dealing with demons like me to save him."

"Your choice is obvious, seeing as how he's dead. But what would he think of you now?"

(Malcolm Hawke stood before him in the forests, a few miles from their farm. They already lived on the outskirts, but Malcolm knew they needed to be further when practicing this.

Garrett had a poor habit of paying more attention to his father than what his father was trying to teach him.

"-and only then can you cast it," he was saying. "Garrett, did you hear a word I said?"

"Why do you keep looking around like someone will find us?" The question slipped out. It was all he could think for several lessons now, the tension in his father's shoulders, the way his eyes darted from shadow to shadow as if spies lurked in each one.

He shakes his head, a find smile straying into his lips. "Because you never know when someone-")

Garrett grins up at the demon. There is no recoil, no give, just calculations in its eyes.

"You will never," Garrett says slowly, "be able to beat me."

"Because you do not fear? We both know how untrue that is."

(His mother begs for death in his arms, he has to choose.)

"I have faced my every fear and I know them all. You can't show me anything I haven't already been scared of. You just regurgitate what I've already felt. I may be afraid, but I do not fear you."

It pushes.

(Debris scattered around his feet, _they all choose Marian-)_

((Fenris' face, carved into harsh lines and his sword unsheathed, snarling at him as the lyrium illuminates-))

(((He is seven years old and full of accidents and energy he can't control, one wrong word and Marian is collapsing, the hair on the back of his neck raising as the air crackles and oh maker oh maker my sister-)))

"What do you think nightmares are?"

The question is posed almost before he has shaken off the dreams. Garrett stares into it's eyes, claws so gentle, eyes so gentle. It almost looks like it regrets.

(They stand in a different part of the Fade. "My family," he calls them, and the demon tempts them away. He is left without them, the haunting knowledge that he is none of their first choices.)

"You've met spirits before," it says. The good of us. The bad of us. You understand better than at least some how we are corrupted. You saw it in your friend.

"He was Justice. But he could not remain so. And Vengeance he became."

Garrett thinks he understands. "And what were you?"

It pauses. Laughs. "I was Hope." Eyes so soft and wishing, claws carding through his hair. "You almost make me Hope again."

"Because I'm not scared of you?"

"Because you are everything a spirit hopes for when they wish to see the human's world through a human' eyes. Because you are not scared of me, but of all of the things that I have shown you. And you still do not yield. No wish for the power we offer, no need of the help we bring. A rare good man among the real monsters."

"I would say that about several people I know." He would. He would.

"It wouldn't be true. Not true enough."

He throws his head back. "So what? Is this the point where you ask me if I'll share with you? Let you experience humanity and help you get better? Because I think we both know that I'm stuck up here good and long, with no way out."

"But you hope not." It says. "You hope. I am already better because of you." Its voice is no longer hissing and scratching. The undulation of body and legs has shrunk. It releases him. "I don't know how. But I am better because of you."

His legs feel weak and his mind spins, watching the creature in front of him almost diminish. "Can you heal completely? Or will you just get worse again?"

It... coagulates, he think, not quite solid but reforming, shaping a body out of mist. It glows faintly. It almost looks like his father.

"I don't know." He looks at his own hands, not quite light but not the darkness that they both feared. He looks down at Garrett and smiles, laying a hand on his head and murmuring almost like a blessing. "But I hope."

The ground around them melts away, crags and barrenness taking on the echoes of Adamant, the shapes of Garrett's better memories, some odd mix between the two.

"Where do I go now?" Garrett whispers. At least in the fight there was purpose, but now there is only eternity waiting for him in the Fade.

"Why go at all?" Hope whispers back with a smile. "Or why must it be a bad thing to stay? There are plenty here that were under my influence as a Nightmare. Perhaps it can be for you to help them as you did me. There are worse fates to face for eternity"

Garrett considers. "Yes. There certainly are."

**Author's Note:**

> So I've had this done for almost two weeks now and I reeeeally meant to post it on May 24th (my birthday) but I've was really worried bc this one kinda takes a different turn than the others, what with Garrett and fixing the demon and all. Idk why guys, but it made sense in my mind that it happen, so it wrote itself like that. 
> 
> I'm trying to move towards A) getting Garrett out of the Fade and B) mixing it up with Solas' plans to drop the veil, but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ I've got no written out plans. Any ideas, comments telling me this one was still good, or even comments saying that it wasn't and I could do better would be appreciated! 
> 
> (psssssst remember how I said it was my birthday a while ago? comments for presents, guys)


End file.
